Flexport Common Errors

Overview

Quick reference for the most common Flexport API v2 errors. The API returns standard HTTP codes with JSON error bodies containing code, message, and sometimes details fields.

Prerequisites

• An authorized support role, opaque correlation ID, redacted telemetry, and a safe sandbox or read-only reproduction path.
• An incident owner for credentials, shipment data, customs documents, and external notifications.

Instructions

1. Classify the failure as authentication, authorization, schema, throttling, upstream availability, or delivery.
2. Reproduce with a fictional or read-only sandbox request before retrying a production operation.
3. Check scoped credentials, environment, payload schema, target/destination policy, and queue state in order.
4. Apply the smallest reversible correction, verify success and safe failure behavior, and escalate possible exposure immediately.

Error Handling

• Do not retry permission failures with broader keys; route them to the authorized owner.
• Bound retry/backoff, maintain idempotency, and quarantine exhausted work for review.
• Redact commercial terms, addresses, invoices, documents, and headers from support evidence.

Output

Return a diagnostic receipt with the error category, opaque correlation ID, safe reproduction result, corrective action, verification, owner, and follow-up. Keep shipment records, commercial documents, addresses, and credentials in authorized systems rather than the receipt.

Examples

Use a synthetic booking to trigger a controlled validation error, correct the field mapping, and verify the result using only an opaque identifier. On a permission failure, pause the worker until the approved owner validates a least-privilege sandbox request.

Error Reference

401 Unauthorized — Invalid or Missing API Key

{ "error": { "code": "UNAUTHORIZED", "message": "Invalid API key" } }

Causes: Missing Authorization header, expired JWT token, revoked API key.

Fix:

# Verify key is set
echo $FLEXPORT_API_KEY | head -c 10
# Test with cURL
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FLEXPORT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Flexport-Version: 2" \
  https://api.flexport.com/shipments?per=1

403 Forbidden — Insufficient Permissions

Causes: API key lacks required scope, IP whitelist blocking, sandbox key used on production.

Fix: Check key permissions in Flexport Portal > Settings > Developer. Ensure key scope includes the endpoint you are calling.

404 Not Found — Resource Does Not Exist

{ "error": { "code": "NOT_FOUND", "message": "Shipment shp_xxx not found" } }

Causes: Wrong ID format, resource deleted, using test ID in production.

Fix: List resources first to get valid IDs:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $FLEXPORT_API_KEY" \
     -H "Flexport-Version: 2" \
     https://api.flexport.com/shipments?per=1 | jq '.data.records[0].id'

422 Unprocessable Entity — Validation Failed

{ "error": { "code": "VALIDATION_ERROR", "message": "Invalid port code", "details": [...] } }

Common validation failures:

429 Too Many Requests — Rate Limited

{ "error": { "code": "RATE_LIMITED", "message": "Rate limit exceeded" } }

Fix: Check response headers and back off:

function handleRateLimit(res: Response): number {
  const retryAfter = res.headers.get('Retry-After');
  const remaining = res.headers.get('X-RateLimit-Remaining');
  console.log(`Rate limited. Remaining: ${remaining}. Retry after: ${retryAfter}s`);
  return parseInt(retryAfter || '60') * 1000;
}

500/502/503 — Server Errors

Causes: Flexport internal issue, maintenance window, upstream provider failure.

Fix:

# Check Flexport status page
curl -s https://status.flexport.com/api/v2/status.json | jq '.status'

Retry with exponential backoff for transient 5xx errors. See flexport-rate-limits.

Diagnostic Script

#!/bin/bash
echo "=== Flexport Diagnostics ==="
echo "API Key set: ${FLEXPORT_API_KEY:+YES}"
echo "Key prefix: ${FLEXPORT_API_KEY:0:8}..."
echo -n "API status: "
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FLEXPORT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Flexport-Version: 2" \
  https://api.flexport.com/shipments?per=1
echo ""
echo -n "Status page: "
curl -s https://status.flexport.com/api/v2/status.json | jq -r '.status.description'

Escalation Path

1. Run diagnostic script above
2. Collect request ID from response headers (X-Request-Id)
3. Check Flexport Status
4. Contact Flexport support with request ID and error details

Resources

• Flexport API Reference
• Flexport Status Page
• Developer Portal

Next Steps

For comprehensive debugging, see flexport-debug-bundle.